Many restaurant and retail leaders share the same uncomfortable beginning: nobody trained them; somebody simply promoted them. They were the strongest server, fastest cook, dependable employee, or person who always showed up. Then they received a set of keys, inherited a team, and faced quiet judgment for struggling with responsibilities they’d never been taught to handle.
Clay David Laugier addresses that gap in Coaching Playbook for Modern Times, a two-book series created for managers in restaurants, food service, hospitality, retail, healthcare, and education. Gallup reports that fewer than half of managers worldwide have received formal management training. Clay’s series responds with practical guidance written for every education level and grounded in more than two decades of frontline experience.
These books speak directly to new managers, shift leaders, multi-unit operators, and supervisors facing high turnover, low morale, difficult conversations, and inconsistent standards. The central message is clear: a struggling team often reflects a system that needs attention. Both books are available on Amazon.
Two Books, One Practical Leadership System
Book One, The Coaching Playbook: Lead with Heart. Coach with Clarity., gives managers a behavior-based system they can use during a hectic Saturday dinner rush. Its Coaching Loop offers five steps for turning desired behaviors into lasting habits, while the S.H.I.F.T. Sequence helps those practices hold across shifts, managers, and locations.
Readers learn how to run useful five-minute pre-shift huddles, create behavior scoreboards, maintain coaching logs, and establish dependable shift rituals. They’ll also find plainspoken feedback scripts without corporate jargon, along with guidance for leading up, down, and sideways when their title carries limited authority. Clay brings emotional range to the material, describing a balance of Ted Lasso’s heart and Shorsey’s fire.
The book is designed to build trust, strengthen onboarding, improve retention, and raise guest satisfaction without adding headcount or cost. Results cited from real operators include staff-turnover reductions of 40 to 60 percent, clearer standards, stronger connection, and less daily chaos. Its defining idea is powerful: managers shape culture one behavior at a time.
Book Two, Set the Tone: What to Say, and How to Lead, When It Matters Most, carries that system into tense, immediate situations. It focuses on the pre-shift conversation that shapes the night, the correction delayed for three weeks, the disruptive employee everyone recognizes, and the inherited team a new manager did not choose.
Clay understands that knowing a framework can feel easier than finding the right words while orders are backed up and emotions are rising. This book supplies actual scripts and prepares leaders for the crucial thirty seconds before they step onto the floor. Its guiding principle is that the simplest action repeated daily will outperform a brilliant action attempted once. That approach keeps good ideas usable on an ordinary Tuesday.
About the Author
Clay is a leadership coach, operations consultant, storyteller, and self-described punk-rock foodie. He has spent more than twenty years working on floors, in dish pits, behind counters, in catering operations, community kitchens, and the general manager’s chair. Through Clay Laugier Ventures and Seeded Concepts, he supports restaurant groups, food service operators, and retail businesses with team development and behavioral coaching systems.
His documented record includes more than $1.6 million in sales growth and a number-one district ranking in competitive retail. He also cofounded a community café and business incubator in Kingston, New York, created to train and pay people the wider market had written off. The café paid $15 an hour when that rate was rare locally and returned 75 percent of its profit to the café and surrounding community.
Clay writes for the exhausted shift lead, the overstretched store manager, and the operator whose latest fix refuses to stick. He’s experienced poor leadership from both sides, including moments when he had the right intention and the wrong words. Those lessons shaped his belief that work can carry greater meaning and feel more enjoyable when leaders use story, clarity, and repetition to guide people.
Leadership That Holds Under Pressure
Coaching Playbook for Modern Times meets managers where leadership truly happens: on busy floors, during difficult conversations, and amid unpredictable shifts. Together, its frameworks and scripts offer a practical route toward better coaching, steadier culture, and teams equipped for success.
For leaders who were handed responsibility before receiving guidance, Clay’s two-book series can finally feel like the manual that should’ve arrived with the keys.